Hammer of the Righteous is the Paladin Tank New Deal (BETA)

[Vanifae]

Hammer of the Righteous

Hammer of the Righteous is awesome.

I tanked Utgarde Keep again last night much more assured of how to handle the dungeon. I started off using my Hammer of Judgment but I decided to experiment and use Coldstone Cutlass instead just after the first boss.

Now these numbers are rough but with the hammer I was doing about 200ish holy damage per hit with Hammer of the Righteous. When I switched to the cutlass my damage per hit jumped to about 540ish holy damage per hit. Keep in mind this is hitting up to three targets every three seconds for about 140ish mana.

I will get exact numbers tonight, along with a Combat Log for better documentation.

I want to stress that these numbers may be very inaccurate based on testing and numbers, I will have more accurate info tonight.

Now you may think my overall spell damage suffered but my attack power increased, not enough to be commensurate with the loss but not so much that I would be gimped. What I noticed is that I could change my cycles up; I did not have to use Consecrate much, beyond maybe initial contact with the pull or to pick up incoming adds. Once I had them established and on me, I could tab target Hammer of the Righteous and hold threat very easy while keeping a modest mana pull only resorting to Consecrate when I needed a threat boost on several mobs at once.

This ability is ridiculously cheap at this point, usable every six seconds, and it deals really nice damage when you have a proper weapon to take advantage of it. I know it may be hard to do, but I am inclined to say that the days of us hunting down spell damage weapons may be coming to an end; or it will be reserved solely for AoE damage and even then that may be questionable.

Personally I enjoyed it, it made paladin tanking seem much more active; Hammer of the Righteous is a step in the right direction. Cheap high threat ability that hits multiple enemies so it plays to our strengths as a tank, and yet allows us much greater flexibility in and out of tanking role.

I still have to verify if it can crit, I have not seen it crit, but then again I need to look through my combat logs to see for sure.

More to come as I play with this ability more.

[Worldie]

My HotR hits for about 150-250 damage, but my Unbreakable will is 1.6 :\

Guess i should take a slow weapon from some quest... or use my Decapitator.

[Vanifae]

My HotR hits for about 150-250 damage, but my Unbreakable will is 1.6 :\

Guess i should take a slow weapon from some quest... or use my Decapitator.

Yeah its a funky ability that goes against the grain of how we currently gear.

[Dorvan]

Hm, the large of a damage difference makes me wonder if HotR isn't normalized....

Anyone want to go to town with a bunch of AP gear and two weapons with the same DPS but different speeds?

[PsiVen]

Well, I started my tanking in TBC with a Grand Marshal's Swiftblade... Guess I'll go into LK with a Vengeful/Brutal Slicer

[Spectrum]

Well, all the caster weapons have really high attack speeds, for whatever reason. Being able to switch to a nice slow weapon for Hammer of the Righteous will be awesome as it will also have some nice benefits with seal/judgement procs.

Perhaps I should work on grabbing Kings Defender or Sun Eater in the next few weeks.

[moduspwnens]

Hm, the large of a damage difference makes me wonder if HotR isn't normalized....

Anyone want to go to town with a bunch of AP gear and two weapons with the same DPS but different speeds?

Even if they do different damage, though, does that necessarily mean the threat component changes with it? Or is that something we'd just assume to be true?

[Modal]

Perhaps I should work on grabbing Kings Defender or Sun Eater in the next few weeks.

Those are not slow. =(

[Vanifae]

Hm, the large of a damage difference makes me wonder if HotR isn't normalized....

Anyone want to go to town with a bunch of AP gear and two weapons with the same DPS but different speeds?

I am pulling this from memory so I maybe mucking it up, but I am pretty sure that my damage went from 200ish to 500ish my attack power increased as well.

But I know there were several pulls all I did was judge and use HotR and I held aggro just fine on three to four mobs.

Obviously Holy Shield and Ret Aura as well.

[Vanifae]

Hm, the large of a damage difference makes me wonder if HotR isn't normalized....

Anyone want to go to town with a bunch of AP gear and two weapons with the same DPS but different speeds?

Even if they do different damage, though, does that necessarily mean the threat component changes with it? Or is that something we'd just assume to be true?

That is a good question, I have no idea what the High Threat component means, or how that translates into raw numbers.

[Spectrum]

Perhaps I should work on grabbing Kings Defender or Sun Eater in the next few weeks.

Those are not slow. =(

I didn't bother to look them up >_<. Based on PsiVen's comment I'm thinking maybe an S2 weapon would be better. Those go down to 2.6 main-hand I believe.

Even if the AP is normalized, the damage range on the weapon wouldn't be, for what it's worth, still making slow weapons hit harder.

Also, the ability does 100% holy damage, correct? This means it's 100% threat goodness.

[Dorvan]

Even if they do different damage, though, does that necessarily mean the threat component changes with it? Or is that something we'd just assume to be true?

It deals Holy damage, so regardless of the innate threat boost in HotR, going from 200 to 500 damage increase the threat generated by 570 from the Holy damage alone. If someone want to get started on trying to figure out what the innate threat boost on it is, that'd be great....threat testing is kind of a pain though, be warned.

[AutomaticZen]

If I'm understanding right, King's Defender isn't slow enough.

Easy, slow 1 handers to get would be in order:

Merciless Gladiator's Slicer
Merciless Gladiator's Pummeler
Heartless
Talon of Azshara (this last one's fuzzy because it has Agi instead of STAM, but whatever)

[Andox]

This is awesome, please dont make me wet my pants Btw, this Coldstone Cutlass, I assume that you get that quest pretty quick. When I check the prior quests it looks like the old slassic starting quest, a commander is mourning, burn corpses, rescue soldiers and other stuff. Confirm on this one?

But back to the ability. Would you recommend me tanking with a Coldstone Cutlass in Utgarde keep? Or is there any pulls where it would complicate, I mean pulls with like 10 mobs in it. I do have some T6 gear and the Sunwell badges, so my SD would be ok.

But it´s good that it´s so cheap. I´ve seen your screenshots and the mobs hit you for around 250, thats nothing. I would be forced to chain chug pots, but now... This looks like the solution! Hammer of the Righteous will be our primary threat ability. And Consecration will be for those OH SHIT pulls when you get several groups.

[Dorvan]

I am pulling this from memory so I maybe mucking it up, but I am pretty sure that my damage went from 200ish to 500ish my attack power increased as well.

But I know there were several pulls all I did was judge and use HotR and I held aggro just fine on three to four mobs.

Obviously Holy Shield and Ret Aura as well.

Yeah....my point is that the damage increase you saw looks too large if the sweapon swap was the only thing that changed. Regardless, it's worth testing to see if HotR is normalized...if someone could perform the test I suggested above that'd be great